


The Missing Princess

by Marsalias



Category: Original Work
Genre: Complete Story, Fantasy, Gen, Heroic Fantasy, Magic, Short Story, people die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24446266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marsalias/pseuds/Marsalias
Summary: We reached the third day of our journey and, to be honest, things were not going well.Mother always said that when things got really bad, it was never just one thing.  One thing, you could cope with.  No.  Troubles came in threes.  Here were ours:One. The sky, boiling overhead, red lightning flashing through the clouds, rain washing out the roads.Two. The wizard, wretched and retching by the fire, sweat pouring down his face.Three, and this was the important one.  The latest word on the missing princess had arrived at nightfall.  Our timetable had been accelerated significantly.
Kudos: 18





	The Missing Princess

We reached the third day of our journey and, to be honest, things were not going well. 

Mother always said that when things got really bad, it was never just one thing. One thing, you could cope with. No. Troubles came in threes. Here were ours: 

One. The sky, boiling overhead, red lightning flashing through the clouds, rain washing out the roads.

Two. The wizard, wretched and retching by the fire, sweat pouring down his face.

Three, and this was the important one. The latest word on the missing princess had arrived at nightfall. Our timetable had been accelerated significantly. 

I took my two lieutenants to the side of the cave. First, I turned to Yuren, our guide, and asked, "If we left the wizard and , could we make it to Hanarail tomorrow?"

Yuren ran his thumb over one of the maps inked on his forearm. "Possibly. It would be difficult."

"We can't leave the wizard!" exclaimed Hebena, my cousin. Years past, we learned tactics and swordplay together. 

"And Zeren, to look after him."

Hebena made a dismissive motion. "Forget Zeren. We'll never win without the wizard."

"No," croaked the wizard, half rising from his position. "The... princess... more important." 

I watched, uneasy, as he regained his breath. 

He held out his hands. "There's another way. Give me your sword."

I handed it to him. He bent double over the steel blade, crooning to it, his eyes bright with fever and magic. Finally, he sat back. "It'll kill the beast in Hanarail," he said. Then he slumped, eyes rolling back in his head. 

Zeren reacted first, putting his hand on the wizard's chest and his neck. He shook his head. 

"Nothing I can do," he said. "He's dead."

We lost three horses the next day. Zeren cried when we slit his horse's throat, but there was nothing else we could do for a leg that badly broken. 

After the third, Yuren suggested we leave the horses and roads behind. We would make better time cutting across the mountainside. Hebena liked the idea of coming at the city from an unexpected angle. I agreed. With only ten of us wouldn't be like moving an army over the same terrain, and the trees would provide some shelter from the rain.

But because of those trees, we didn't see our enemies. 

They looked like men, women, and children, but they weren't. Their eyes fluttered red, and smoke dripped from their noses. 

Zeren went first, a fist buried in his stomach. He screamed as he burned from the inside out. Yuren clawed his way up a tree, and the rest of us drew our weapons. I put my sword through the neck of Zeren’s, and the creature fell to ash.

By the time the battle was over, five of us remained. Yuren, Hebena, Osena and Mena, the archers, and myself. 

I pursed my lips. The creatures always seemed to go for the men first. 

We dragged the bodies of our dead away from the ashes creatures, and covered them with branches. We didn't have time for anything more than that and a few whispered prayers. 

At dusk, we reached Hanarail. The walls of the city were as I saw them last: in ruins. 

Once, Hanarail had been the flower of the kingdom, the seat of the queen's court. But now? Now those creatures crawled through the broken streets and burned out houses, glowing faintly in the growing dark.

From our hiding place in the treeline, I pointed at a still-standing gatehouse. "There," I said. Then I moved my finger to indicate several creatures near the building.

Osena nodded, and stepped forward, knocking an arrow to her bow. Mena copied the motion. They let fly, and fly again. Each of the arrows found its mark in the head or chest of one of the creatures. 

The way clear, four of us ran forward through the rain. Yuren, his task done for now, stayed back. He would still be there when we made our return journey.

When. Not if. 

The darkness in the guardhouse forced us to light lanterns. I went first, Hebena half a step behind me. We kept our swords drawn. Osena and Mena followed, with knives and lanterns. The halls were too narrow for their bows. 

The tables were overturned. The metal rusted. Dust lay thick on the floor, and we startled more than a few rats. I noted a scorch mark on one wall, marking the place where I first slew a red-eyed creature. 

The tunnel in the basement was small and close. This would be a bad place to be attacked. But the creatures seemed just as unaware of the tunnel as they had been the last time I had passed through it. We traveled beneath the city without issue, and climbed the steep stairs up into the palace. 

The room we emerged into had once been mine. Every scrap of cloth within had been torn to shreds, the furniture rendered down to splinters, the murals on the walls hammered to pieces, the plaster littering the floor. 

It was nothing, compared to what had happened in the city. 

Hebena knew the halls of the palace almost as well as I did, but our enemies were more concentrated here. We wanted to keep our stealth, so we moved slowly. In the wider rooms and halls, Osena and Mena took up their bows again. Osena ran out of arrows halfway through, and Mena split her remaining ones with her. 

We skirted the edges of the great receiving hall, and the chambers where the court had once played at politics. We took a shortcut through a servants’ stair, down into the gallery of statues. 

There, we made a mistake, mistaking a particularly dusty creature for a statue. It shrieked like a steaming teapot as we passed in front of it, and I heard footsteps, a great many of them. It had called its kin. 

Hebena cleaved its head from its body and we ran. The creatures did not possess great intelligence. If we could hide ourselves from them for long enough, they would give up the search. She and I, wearing heavier armor, soon fell behind Osena and Mena. 

Mena tripped over the outstretched arm of a fallen statue. Abandoning her bow, Osena stopped to help her up. A steaming hand reached around a statue and seized Osena’s arm. She screamed. 

Mena struggled to her feet, and stabbed the thing with an arrow. She pulled back, hissing, arrow blackened and hand scalded. 

The four of us spent the next hour hiding in a power room. Osena and Mena’s burns shone and wept gruesomely, and considering their location, rendered them unable to fight. Without Zeren, there was little we could do for them, but wrap them and hope they wouldn’t become infected. 

“Take us with you,” said Mena as Hebena and I prepared to leave. “If nothing else, we can be a distraction.”

I shook my head. “You’d slow us down,” I said. We all knew it was a lie. Burns on their hands and arms would not keep them from running. “We will come back for you, when we’re done.”

The hall to the treasury was empty. The great vault doors hung sadly on their hinges, pink-hued light spilling from within. Hebena and I took one last look at each other and raised our swords. 

Books littered the floor of the treasury, in no particular order or mode of organization. Some appeared to have been simply thrown where they lay, resting on their pages, or open on their spines. In the center of the room stood a throne of red glass. Something inside of it burned like firelight. 

A woman, a princess, sat on it. Her beauty had not faded in the years since I last saw her. On the throne, her skirts were artfully arrayed. Her tiara, set with rubies, gleamed. So did her eyes. 

“I see mother has sent her favorite killers after me,” she said, drumming her long nails on the book in her lap. The pages smoked.

“Hello, sister,” I said. I stepped to the left, Hebena, to the right. “The wizard is dead.”

“Don’t pretend to mourn. You didn’t even know his name.”

“I suspect he was shy of sharing, after you used it to curse him the first time,” I said, mildly, moving closer. “Wizards are like that.”

My sister clicked her tongue and made a complicated gesture with one hand. Hebena dove to the floor as the books around her burst into flame. I ran forward, only to come to a stop as my sister made another gesture, drawing a line of fire between us. 

“If mother wanted me dead,” she said, amused, “she should have sent an army. Or perhaps it’s _you_ she wants dead this time.”

“She doesn’t even know I’m here. If you gave this up,” I gestured at the fire and all it implied, “she would welcome you back with open arms, even now.”

“And you?” Her raised eyebrow barely behind the fire. 

“No,” I said. I leapt through the fire, sword extended. It found its mark.

The fires died with my sister. All of them. So did the storm, and the creatures she had spawned. Leaving the city was, therefore, a relatively simple matter. 

Yuren was no longer alone in the woods. Two dozen knights in my mother’s livery stood by him. They turned to face us as we approached. A murmur of _the missing princess_ reached my ears. Several of the knights dismounted to bow.

For my greeting, I held up my sister’s severed head. 


End file.
